Digital photography has become a consumer application of great significance. It has afforded individuals convenience in capturing and sharing digital images. Devices that capture digital images have become low-cost, and the ability to send pictures from one location to the other has been one of the driving forces in the drive for more network bandwidth.
Due to the relative low cost of memory and the availability of devices and platforms from which digital images can be viewed, the average consumer maintains most digital images on computer-readable mediums, such as hard drives, CD-ROMs, and flash memory. The use of file folders is the primary source of organization, although applications have been created to aid users in organizing and viewing digital images. Some search engines, such as GOOGLE, also enables users to search for images, primarily by matching text-based search input to text metadata or content associated with images.